Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/206

 Maharaja to worship Pākhangba. Touri Ashoiba Hidang said their prophecy might hold good, but to him it appeared that next year a calamity would come The maibas were in such disagreement as to the purport of this omen Then the Panjees were called in, and the Maharaja asked them what they thought of the appearance of the dolai. Kamalakanto, Wahengba Thabal, and Sarang Jugol Singh said,—"O, Maharaja, unforeseen events have been witnessed. This is an ominous sight. This will bring no good to the Maharaja or to his subjects." The Maharaja asked how these evils could be removed. Kamalakanto advised the Maharaja to offer tulsi (sacred basil) leaves and boiled rice with milk and sugar to the gods, and to feed the Brahmans. On that day the moon was enveloped with red and black and green mists. On the following day the sun was covered with mist at midday. 11th Sunday, news of the arrival of British troops in the north arrived."

There were guilty consciences in Manipur then, for the columns from the north and east and west were hurrying fast on Imphāl to avenge the murder of the Chief Commissioner and his companions.

Some of the passages are as dull as a parish magazine; others are full of good stuff; but I am profoundly convinced that by the strictest modern tests there is plenty of good history here, and much of it is good direct history. There are dates, precise dates—year, month, and day—to satisfy the most exigent modern dry-as-dust historian. There is real life in it. If battles and bloodshed abound in parts, there is also a record of the events, domestic and social, that stirred the hearts of the people—it is a psychological as well as a historical record. Some time or other it may be possible to publish these chronicles as they stand, to collate them with documents from Assam, Tippera, and Burma, and to give to the world which is interested in such things a curious record full of valuable matter for the student of the evolution of semi-civilised societies.